The Heart of the Stars
by Asukai Haruka
Summary: Luxanna Crownguard was just an ordinary, overachieving high schooler when she was chosen to be a Star Guardian, to protect the world from Baron Nashor and his Voidlings. Unfortunately, her four new teammates were nearly always at loggerheads: especially Jinx. How was she supposed to save the world when she could barely even keep her team together?


**A/N: I decided to crosspost this from AO3 after suddenly remembering my account. Sorry for being so inactive lately, but life has been quite difficult. Regardless, I hope you enjoy this!**

 **Update schedules are going to be much, much worse than Lilium's – I literally have no plan for this story at all. As for the Riven/Lux one… I might be abandoning it.**

 **Apologies,  
Haruka**

The world is a pretty enough place when looked at from a great enough distance, I suppose, when you can't see the marks of individual suffering etched on everyone's faces. That's why I've never particularly liked it, kept to the fringes like the crazy outcast that I am – I never had a reason to care about it. The most I would ever do was help the destruction along, add more hatred and chaos to the equation, cuz why the hell not? I didn't care about the world or anyone in it.

Not until now, but all that doesn't matter anymore. I'm dead, for one, and for another the world shining up at me is frozen, time forcibly ground to a screeching halt. I'm the only one moving, sitting on the roof of a skyscraper with my legs dangling off the edge, the only one still breathing when I'm the one that's dead.

She should be coming soon, the cause of this frozen world, and I wonder if I'll be able to talk her out of doing what I know she's trying to do…

"J-Jinx…?" Ah, here she finally is, the prissy Princess of the Stars.

"Jinx!" her voice sounds broken, disbelieving, desperate, all sorts of things that it normally isn't. I don't turn around not because I don't want to see her, but because I don't want to see the heartbroken look on her face.

Sadness doesn't suit her, she looks much better smiling or frowning or just… being that bright, annoying nuisance that she normally is. Despair isn't her thing, it's mine, she's too fluffy and straightforward to know how to keep the pain out of her eyes.

"I'm dead, Lux," I say, keeping my eyes focused on the city below. "You have to let me go."

"Jinx…" she touches my shoulder, but still I refuse to turn. "I can reset this, we can-"

I interrupt her as harshly as I can, "We won, Lux, that's all that matters! The world is safe, so what if I'm dead? No one cares."

Her voice is impossibly soft as she says, " _I care_."

Of course she does, she's the only one. And that's the problem here – cruel as it may seem, the will of the world trumps the will of the individual. It'll be better for the entire planet if she just let time move on, instead of resetting it in a desperate attempt to bring me back to life.

"I can't live without you, Jinx," she's sobbing now, tearing at my heart and making it so hard for me to tell her to do the right thing. I don't want her to be sad, and if she goes on in this timeline, she will be.

But she'll get better, she has to. She's the Lady of Luminosity, for Star's sake, she's light incarnate! There's no way she'll mourn me in darkness for the rest of her life, she'll pick herself up and continue walking. She has to.

Finally facing her, I gently cup her cheek, wiping away her tears with the pad of my thumb. "You have to; it's not fair to undo everyone's hard work just for one life."

"Since when were you the rational one?" she chokes, hands resting tremulously on my waist. "You were always for doing whatever you pleased."

"You must've rubbed off on me," I respond fondly, running my fingers through her bright pink hair.

I love her too much to put her through this again, to have her fight and bleed and struggle as the great Baron Nashor tries to destroy the world. I love her too much to make her suffer again, to have her cry and shout and scream as the stress of leading the saviors of the world tears away at her insides.

It's enough, we've been through enough, just… move on.

She's bullishly optimistic and foolishly sunny, always trying to find the silver lining in the darkest clouds and fighting, fighting, always fighting. She'll miss me, of course she will, that's what love does to people, but the pain will fade. And even if it doesn't, she'll grow strong enough to bear it and live.

Autumn always comes when you're not yet done with the summer, and though you'll wish it lasted longer, there's nothing you can do about it but move forward.

Shaking her head, she chuckles through her tears, "And you on me, it seems. I'm not going to change my mind."

"I… honestly didn't expect you to," I sigh; I've had firsthand experience on how stubborn prissy Miss Luxanna Crownguard can be.

I mean, she bugged me for months before the whole Star Guardian crap happened, and no matter how much I snubbed her, skipped school or broke rules, she never gave up on me. She kept trying to reform me, make me a better student, a better _person_ , and it's rather sad that it all happened too late.

I'm a better person now, but I'm dead.

"You know me too well," she mumbles, burying her face in my shoulder. Her voice cracks again as she whispers, "I thought I'd never see you again."

All I can do is hold her closer, tighter, silently apologizing for the pain I have put her through. I had been reckless, threw away my life in a surge of heroism, and she was the one who had to pay the price.

"I love you, Jinx."

"And I love you," I shake my head with a weak, watery smile – dammit, I'm crying too. "But we won't remember any of this."

"But you'll be alive, and as long as you are, we can make new memories," she says stubbornly, and I resist the urge to chide her for abusing her powers. The reset was meant as an emergency measure, in case we lost and the Baron emerged from the Void to destroy the world. It wasn't supposed to be used to save lost girlfriends.

"We'll meet again soon, then."

"It's a promise."


End file.
